Lorina's Blog

humor

So have y’all seen the blog post “The 6 Most Shockingly Irresponsible Fitspiration Photos?” Now, I do think the author might be reading a bit more into them than should be read, but overall, I agree. I find most fitspo annoying… the idea that health and fitness should be based on shame, deprivation and punishment.

So a handful of us on MyFitnessPal decided we’d make our own, starring ourselves, not models who fasted for a shoot and have a team to do their hair and makeup, a professional photographer, perfect lighting, and some photoshop gurus to correct any flaw that still slip through the cracks. Fitspo for the normal person.

It started with the washing machine. It’s an apartment sized portable number that I wheel across my kitchen and attach to my sink. Pain in the ass, but less of a pain in the ass than doing the required plumbing to have it installed for real. And it’s something I got used about 13 years ago. So it’s old. And it’s been smelling a little hot. I did some trouble shooting with google, and thought it might need it’s belt replaced. So I took the back off it. And in the process, I not only realized that I can’t easily get to the belt, but I damaged the adapter hose, so when I tried to hook it back up, water sprayed everywhere. Now I’m at a conundrum of whether or not to replace the hose, and still have the issue with it possibly overheating, or bite the bullet and get a new one. In the meantime… there’s a laundromat a half mile down the road. And it’s kind of nice to be able to wash all my clothes in under an hour than spend all day and all of the night doing half a dozen tiny loads in my tiny washer.

Then it was my camera. Coming home from the Halloween party “lit” on Long Island Iced Teas was not a good time to try to plug the USB cable into the camera port. Busted. Great. But not a total disaster because the easiest “fix” was getting a SD card reader for just about eight bucks.

Then the dishwasher. Or maybe the dishwasher was the first problem. But honestly a slight leak occasionally is barely enough of a problem to worry me at the time. Stick a towel under the door. The dishes are still getting clean.

Next was the toaster. I cleaned the crumbs out of it, and somehow, somewhere, knocked loose an invisible spring or something, and now when you depress the lever, it won’t stay down. Shit. But it was a $5 Black Friday purchase from a long time ago. How long, I have no idea. But I know I haven’t participated in Black Friday madness in about a decade or so.

The toaster is now replaced with a beautiful red retro style one that needs the hood ornament from a ’54 Bel Air attached. But seriously… why are some toasters $8 and some are $80? What can the $80 toaster possibly do to make it worth that much more? And moreover, while browsing the small appliance aisle, I came across the Pastry Tart Maker. To make your own POP TARTS. What? Why? Who? Flabbergasted. Someone would honestly pay $20 for the ability to make their own Pop Tarts from scratch? Granted, I love my Stuff N Munch sandwich maker. And I do own a Quesadilla Maker. And I really like Pop Tarts. But… no. No, I just can’t wrap my mind around it.

Then there was the oven. It worked fine on Halloween, when we made a pizza. Then the next day… nothing. The burners still worked, but the oven was cold and dead. Thanks to my wonderful friends on Facebook, I found/guessed/hoped that it was just the igniter. And thanks to google, I found that the part that was $65 on the Sears website was $45 on the Lowes website, and only $20 with shipping from Amazon.

The part came, and I got to work on switching it. It was easy. I was amazed at how easy. I was even more amazed that I was able to be bent over into my oven wearing yoga pants without Fritz taking a photo of my bum. Seriously. There’s photos of my bum hiking, my bum gardening, my bum washing the dog, my bum laying tiles, etc.

Most of all, though, I was amazed that such a cheap fix actually worked. Once I put the oven all back together and plugged it back in, I heard that comforting “WHOOSH!” of heat in seconds. Hallelujah! After a week of cooking only on the stovetop, I could make pizza again!

But it smelled a little funny. I thought it might have been that “new part smell,” or maybe that the oven hadn’t been used in a while, kind of like how the furnace smells funny when you first use it in the fall after being idle all winter.

No. It wasn’t that. It was because as much as I rock as a handyman, I’m still a forgetful ninny shithead and forgot to take my pliers out of the broiler drawer.

If I trim the melted bits, they’ll still work in a pinch.

Our Bacon Cheeseburger Pizza was served with a hint of the pungent aroma of melted plastic. And the world is a safer place… because I am not a surgeon.

I just realized today that Coco and Ice T are both beverages. How cute! They should name their child Pepsi.

Speaking of Pepsi, Pepsi should totally sponsor a Suicidal Tendencies concert tour. That’s all the guy wanted. A Pepsi. And his parents wouldn’t give it to him.

Speaking of parents, parents should not let their toddler aged children dish out their own foods at a buffet. The children’s faces are below sneeze-guard level and that’s just nasty.

Speaking of food that looks like snot, are oysters really an aphrodisiac or is it just that someone who’d put an oyster in their mouth would put damn near ANYTHING in their mouth?

Speaking of things that make me gag, I think I saw my ex while we were out yesterday. But it might have just been a really ugly woman. I really have some unresolved anger issues about him. I’m personally offended that he’s still using my oxygen and living on my planet.

Speaking of my sometimes violent nature, I had a dream the other night that I was Dorothy, and on trial for the double murders of the Witches of the West and East. But the only part that struck me as strange was that I was in the courtroom and had not yet met with my attorney. And the prosecuting attorney was Sarah Gilbert.

Speaking of Sarah Gilbert, her sister Melissa Gilbert is on Dancing with the Stars. On Little House on the Prairie, she was called “Half Pint,” but seeing her in those skimpy outfits, she’s got a couple of gallon jugs now. Yowsah! Where’d THEY come from?!

Speaking of jugs, Wegmans was completely out of chocolate milk yesterday, and that made me sad, because that’s my favorite bedtime snack. And now we’re back to cocoa…